From the April 5, 2022 article by Scarlet Cheng for The Art Newspaper:
The J. Paul Getty Museum will this June unveil the results of an intensive conservation of Willem de Kooning’s 1955 Woman-Ochre, which was badly damaged during a brazen daytime heist at the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) in 1985. The painting was cut out of its frame, ripped from its backing and remained lost for more than 30 years. In 2019 UAMA sent it to the Getty, which takes on a limited number of pro-bono conservation projects. The restored work will be featured in Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery at the Getty Center (7 June-28 August), which will also document the painstaking process of rehabilitation.
It has taken three years, says Ulrich Birkmaier, the senior conservator of paintings at the Getty, “both because of the complexity of the treatment, but also the fact that we haven’t been able to work on it full-time because of the constraints of Covid.”
When the painting arrived, conservators undertook a thorough technical analysis through infrared and ultraviolet examination and X-ray imaging, as well as a cross-section analysis of a tiny paint chip from the damaged surface. From that they determined the steps of the treatment.
The paint first needed to be consolidated, as sections were flaking from when the canvas was pulled away from its lining during the theft. This step was meticulously done under a microscope by the associate paintings conservator Laura Rivers and took nearly two years. Then came the cleaning, which involved removing old surface coatings, including a 1974 treatment of the painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and an amateur varnish application by the thieves.
To learn more about the painting and its conservation treatment, read the full article on The Art Newspaper website.
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The de Kooning project is a joint J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Conservation Institute collaboration, together with the University of Arizona Museum of Art. WUDPAC Class of 2005 alumna Laura Rivers carried out the consolidation of the damaged paint surface and the removal of the two varnishes that were present on the painting. Ulrich Birkmaier will be doing the structural work and the aesthetic compensation. Tom Learner, Lynn Lee, Douglas MacLennan, Joy Mazurek, and Vincent Beltran have carried out the scientific analysis. The exhibition Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery, opens at the Getty Center on June 7.
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Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery
June 7–August 28, 2022
In the mid 1950s, Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning painted Woman-Ochre, part of his controversial Woman series. The painting was eventually donated to the University of Arizona Museum of Art, where it was on display until 1985 when it was cut from its frame and stolen, missing for the next 32 years. This exhibition picks up after the painting’s momentous 2017 recovery, highlighting its scientific analysis and painstaking conservation treatment.
